In my last post, we walked through the Intel NUC unboxing and initial hardware setup (installing SSD and RAM).
Today we’ll update the BIOS.
First, let’s boot the NUC to the BIOS
- Power on the NUC
- Immediately, repeatedly press F2 key until Intel Visual BIOS screen loads.
- Take note of the currently installed BIOS version on the top left; mine is BECFL357.86A.0077.2019.1127.1452
Download the BIOS update
Let’s locate the file and copy it to a FAT formatted USB drive. A simple DuckDuckGo search for “NUC8i5BEH bios update” returns the Downloads page for the NUC.
Now copy BIOS Firmware update to a USB drive
I personally opted to format a USB drive right before copying the file, but this step may not be necessary for you. The USB drive should be formatted in FAT (not bootable). Windows users can format using File Explorer; Mac users can format using the Disk Utility. Once USB is ready, copy file ‘BE0085.bio’
Apply BIOS Firmware update
- Power on the NUC and boot to the BIOS
- Insert USB drive
- Click the ‘Update’ link
- Navigate to file on USB, and click ‘Open’
- Click to confirm BIOS update
- The NUC will then restart and apply the firmware update
- The firmware upgrade process lasted 1-2 minutes on my NUC; upon completion, the NUC reboots
- Let’s boot back to the Intel Visual BIOS to validate the upgraded firmware version
- Post upgrade, the BIOS version is BECFL357.86A.0085.2020.1007.1917
Success
On my next post we’ll install VMware ESXi
Much easier than Coreboot!